27th January, 2015
By Olumuyiwa Wahab Jimoh
In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the usurer cried out in court that the new judge was indeed one who had come to make things right again – A Daniel come to judgment. Though the eventual judgment that was delivered was not according to his desire and wishes, it was definitely in tandem with natural justice and good conscience.
The Nigerian nation is at crossroads now and is in dire need of men of conscience to deliver her from the clutches of the wickedness that currently pervades its hallowed corridors of power especially at the federal level. They say that when a fish begins to get rotten, it starts from the head. If the head is therefore good, invariably, the entire body will be sound.
Several analysts have situated the nation’s crisis of development within the ambits of the huge corruption that has become wholly systemic, permeating every strata of national life with a deathly stranglehold on the nation’s administration manifesting as a direct continuous crisis of leadership straddling the military regimes and the PDP-led federal government since 1999.
With this commentary, it becomes easy to see where the nearly N70 trn that has been budgeted cumulatively annually since 1999 went. For all intents and purposes, we cannot see this amount of impact on the lives of Nigerians especially on domestic infrastructure, social services and social welfare for the citizenry. Rather, we see a handful of individuals that are getting stupendously wealthy on just their relationship with the government at the centre. People who have become rich overnight just on rentier basis alone establishing a patron-client relationship in the leadership structure in Nigeria.
Corruption is at the heart of the current insurgency and the inability of the government at the centre to conduct a successful containment operation against its activities in Nigeria. It is at the heart of the structural distortions in our security apparatchik making it incapable of delivering on its promises to provide safety for the lives and properties of the nation’s citizenry. This has more than ever before dislocated increasing numbers of Nigerians from their ancestral homes uprooting them forcefully from their cultures and traditions and making them internally displaced persons in a supposed time of democratic rule.
It is corruption singularly that has made us a major il producer to become paradoxically a major petroleum product importer in the world today. It has ensured that our existing refineries are not maintained and new ones not allowed at all to be built so that we can continue enriching a few individuals at the detriment of the entire nation. This situation has created a macro-economic distortion that has placed exceeding pressure on the nation’s foreign exchange market, depreciating the value of the naira constantly despite the increasing revenue from oil as its prices moved up from less than U$9:00/b in 1999 to around U$130:00. The paradox of increasing FX receipts and depreciating local currency persisted as a result and remained unresolved poisoning our national chalice in the process while the PDP-led government watched.
It is corruption that has created all the import waivers that have made nonsense of the tariff regimes of the government, creating gaping holes in the nation’s economic policies for smart fat cats to undermine our nation’s quest for development and further restricting us to perpetual importers of almost all the basic needs of life including food and endangering our domestic production capacity in the process.
The common denominator therefore to our present development quagmire is corruption of monumental dimension; a locus that has refused to be dealt with because the PDP-led federal government despite the multiplicity of the agencies and institutions created to deal with it has deliberately incapacitated them so that they cannot perform the duties for which they were established. We are therefore saddled with toothless bulldogs as anti-corruption institutions that are just mere window dressings to deceive the international community and our development partners that we are serious about fighting the scourge.
If both international and national commentators agree without equivocation that the dilemma of development confronting Nigeria today is located mainly in the level of deep corruption, then, the next logical conclusion would be that if we can find a solution to the malaise, then we would be able to redirect the course of our journey to development. In essence that the roads will become better; the railway services functioning again; hospitals, schools at all levels; potable water, power and energy will become available; unemployment will be reduced, more people lifted out of poverty and Nigeria better able to provide security for life and property within its territorial boundaries. These are some of the opportunities that may become possibilities if we are better able to deal with this evil called corruption.
How then can a nation deal successfully with the issue of endemic corruption? It requires building adequate institutional, legal and administrative capacity. Much more, it requires appropriate and capable leadership to activate and drive its various processes in order to allow it to succeed. In essence, to deal with corruption in Nigeria, we need very firm hands outside the institutions and processes that have been set up to engage it; what some people have come to call political will which is nothing more than the willingness of the leaders to take needed action to ensure that corruption is punished and its proceeds totally sanctioned and reduced. This requires stepping on toes big and small in order to ensure that the nation’s posterity is safeguarded and guaranteed.
What brand of leader do we then need to reverse this slide into further national decay? What qualities would such a person or group of persons possess that would allow them navigate successfully the treacherous waters called the political terrain in Nigeria? What depth of leadership character is needed to be brought to bear to tame all the corrupt hawks and their protectors currently parading the corridors of power and what leadership dimensions are needed to be deployed to block all the conduits and channels that have enabled and facilitated corruption in Nigeria especially since the advent of democratic rule in 1999?
It has become clearer that Nigeria is in dire need of a leader at the national level who will possess the exceptional characteristics that are needed to combat the single issue of corruption upon which we have identified as the major source of our development nightmare. However, what are those crucial qualities that any redemptive leader is required to possess to deal specifically with corruption? This is anchored on the point that once we can identify such qualities and can then identify it in any of the leaders aspiring to become the nation’s President come May 29 this year, the wise thing then is to give all our support and energy to him to ensure that he wins in the election of February 14.
To combat corruption successfully in Nigeria, we need a leader who is not corrupt. The maxim that says “he who goes to equity must have clean hands” applies adequately here. A leader cannot be pretending to fight corruption while he is also very corrupt. It is either he clears out the competition so that he can enjoy the loot alone or he works to enable his cohorts in the continuous effort to loot the treasury dry to thrive. A man that has a graveyard in his bedroom cannot be a good candidate that will seek to root out skeletons from the cupboards of others in the society. We are therefore in dire need of having a leader that is shoulder above corruption, one to whom all manner of corruption and corrupt people stand condemned in his sight.
After digging deep inwards to search himself to be sure that he is free from corruption, the leader must have the capacity to be firm and decisive in applying the law equally and without equivocation or allowing the law to operate freely without undue interference. It means that he ought to be the type that will never be swayed by primordial sentiments in dealing with issues of state. He acts above cronies and puts the interest of the nation above the interest of his friends. He must therefore be strong willed and not easily swayed by emotions, threats and intimidations. These ensure that every intending itchy finger would think twice before embarking on any corrupt activity.
More so, he should be a leader that has the unusual knack for selecting effective and strong team with the right discipline to deliver on the job. It means that such a person must be disciplined himself; a stickler for due processes and always willing to enforce the statutes. They say that “birds of the same feather flock together”. A disciplined leader will invariably attract a disciplined team and vice versa. A disciplined leader will not compromise the battle against corruption neither will his anti-corruption czars. There is no better guarantee for success in this battle than this combination.
Much more, such a leader must have had the requisite experience in combating this scourge; identifying it as the most dangerous factor holding us down as a nation. The need and urgency for action must have overriding place in his heart and therefore shall constitute the driving force of his policies and actions throughout his stay in office.
One would still be at a loss why we have chosen to go this way instead of the usual ‘the man is this and the man is that’. As patriots, we have chosen to lay bare what the problem is and what is needed to solve them. It then becomes easier for the electorate and reader to assess the two major contenders for the post of the nation’s president come February 14 –the incumbent Goodluck Ebele Jonathan or General Muhammadu Buhari.
The core of our developmental challenges having been laid bare thus far in our discourse, what is immediately required to halt the continued slide into decay having been situated within leadership framework and understood within the context of the opportunities provided by the 2015 elections, qualities of the required leadership for the rescue mission from the grip of corruption having been located, the next logical thing to do is to find out which of the two candidates is best qualified to deliver development to Nigeria and help the citizenry enjoy the benefits of democracy.
•To be continued tomorrow.
•Jimoh is Lagos State House of Assembly member representing Apapa Constituency II